Danbury States Attorney Stephen Sedensky leaves the Newtown Municipal Center after the state police debriefing for families involved in the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Conn. on Wednesday, March 27, 2013.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Danbury State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III is the calm-but-focused eye of the storm in the nearly year-long investigation after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

He's become the empathetic guardian of the victims' memories in the fight to keep secret the sounds of the 911 phone calls that came from the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012.

But critics say he's gone too far; that he is acting as though he is the personal lawyer for the families of the 20 first-graders and six adults killed in the school that morning. His delays -- and his echoing silences -- have also provoked the wrath of public-records advocates who claim he's overstepped his authority and extended the criminal probe even though the lone gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, committed suicide at the scene.

Even Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has lambasted Sedensky for taking nearly a year to produce his report.

And First Amendment experts contend that Sedensky had no right to keep such tight-fisted control over the Sandy Hook investigation, which is finally due to be released in summary form on Monday as the mass murder's dark anniversary draws uncomfortably near.

Protector of children

Sedensky's friends and colleagues point out that he is not required by law to even produce a report about the mass murder, other than a brief statement that there will not be any arrests. They fear, however, that he has stretched state child-abuse law beyond its breaking point in an effort to protect the Newtown families and the survivors.

Sedensky's efforts to keep the victims out of the spotlight has actually pushed him into its unblinking glare.

Despite a late-September ruling from the state Freedom of Information Commission, which ordered Sedensky to release the 911 recordings, the veteran prosecutor has burnished his credentials as a staunch opponent of child abuse by appealing the issue to state Superior Court.

In fact, his main offensive tool in the attempted override of the commission is based on a claim of child abuse, even though the murderer was not a relative of any of the 20 first-graders, a requirement that would have put the massacre into the realm of the state Department of Children and Families.

The issue may be decided as soon as Monday, when Judge Eliot D. Prescott holds a hearing at state Superior Court in New Britain before possibly unsealing and reviewing the recordings for himself.

People from Sedensky's past and present say he's always prepared, plays within the rules and works hard to win his cases as the chief prosecutor at state Superior Court in Danbury.

But his efforts to battle child abuse may have resulted in more work than a hands-on prosecutor like Sedensky ever imagined.

Tenacious competitor

When a young Steve Sedensky tried out for the football team at Fairfield's Notre Dame High School, it raised a few eyebrows among the coaches. He didn't look that athletic. And when he barely made it around the track that first day, they figured he wouldn't be back.

Every day after school, Sedensky would head to the track until, finally, he was more than keeping up with his teammates.

"No one worked harder at being a better player than he did," says Dunn, who has remained a friend. "He is persistent and tenacious. You may not always agree with Steve, but his heart is always in the right place."

It is this tenacity -- what some would call pig-headedness --that might have driven Sedensky, 54, into the controversy over the Sandy Hook tragedy.

"There is a lot of weight on Steve's shoulders with this," said Lisa Melillo, the school psychologist at Monroe's Masuk High School, who has worked with Sedensky in the prosecution of child abusers. "He is taking on a lot of heat doing this report, but he is willing to do it because he has a genuine concern for the victims' families. He is truly dedicated to them."

As a state prosecutor for nearly 30 years, Sedensky has viewed a number of gory crime-scene photos, including the case of Danbury restaurant owner Marash Gojcaj, who fatally shot his uncle after an argument and dismembered the body with a hand saw. Sedensky successfully prosecuted Gojcaj in 2011.

But that was nothing compared to what Sedensky found when he arrived at Sandy Hook Elementary School shortly after last December's massacre.

Unlike some of the first responders who took the ensuing days off to deal with what they saw, Sedensky directed the investigation at the scene, met with the victims' families, and went back to his Newtown home that night and hugged his two children, Audrey and Stephen IV.

The next day, he was back at work.

Sympathetic prosecutor

Sedensky grew up in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, the eldest of seven children in a religious Roman Catholic family.

His father, Stephen Sedensky Jr., a longtime Bridgeport lawyer and part-time city attorney, was active in St. Ann's Church and served as president of the Bridgeport Board of Education. He died in 2008.

The younger Sedensky attended St. Ann's School and graduated from Notre Dame High School before enrolling at Plymouth State College in northern New Hampshire.

His father later joked that his son picked Plymouth State because he could ski nearby. But Sedensky said he liked the school because it was Division III and he could play football there, even though he was still considered small for a lineman.

Sedensky's football career ended in his junior year, after he hurt his knee skiing. Undaunted, he found a new outlet for his drive and ambition -- student government. He became treasurer of the student senate and a member of the student judiciary board.

"We heard complaints of students illegally hooking up cable in their rooms," Sedensky said in an earlier interview. That early brush with legal issues on campus kindled his interest in the law.

After graduating from Suffolk University Law School in Boston in 1983, Sedensky applied for a job as a public defender in Bridgeport -- and didn't get it. A year later, he was hired as a prosecutor in the city's Golden Hill Street courthouse.

"I guess it was just fate or something that decided I should be a prosecutor," he said afterward. "I kept seeing one crime victim come in after another, and I had real sympathy for their situations. I really wanted to help them."

After successfully prosecuting two child sex-abuse cases -- considered at the time to be unwinnable -- Sedensky attended national training programs on prosecuting such cases.

`Bridgeport Witch Trial'

In February 1987, Sedensky was assigned to prosecute a Norwalk man charged with sexually assaulting a 5-year-old Fairfield boy. During the trial, Sedensky had the victim testify by video, something that was in use in other states, but had never been done in Connecticut.

Eight years later, Sedensky found himself in the national spotlight for the first time.

Kerri Lynn Patavino, a Trumbull school bus driver and self-proclaimed witch, was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy more than 50 times.

In what was dubbed "The Bridgeport Witch Trial" by national media, the boy testified that he and Patavino had sex after school four times a week on a bed placed over a large pentagram on the floor of her bedroom. Patavino's lawyer gave daily press conferences on the courthouse steps during the trial to a throng of television and newspaper reporters.

But Sedensky refused to join in, repeating what would become his public mantra: "I don't comment on pending cases."

Shortly after winning the Patavino case, Sedensky saw an ad in a legal journal announcing a one-year fellowship at the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse in Alexandria, Va. He ended up going from student to instructor at the center, receiving a national award for his work there.

In 2007, Sedensky, who is chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Justice for Abused Children, brought a program called "Finding Words" to Connecticut. The program is used in other states to train professionals in child abuse cases. It has since been renamed "Child First."

"Steve is instrumental in reforming child abuse investigations in this state," said Theresa Montelli, a licensed clinical social worker at Yale-New Haven Hospital who was recruited by Sedensky to work in the program. "He has changed our work for the better."

Like other professionals who have worked with Sedensky, Montelli referred to Sedensky as a "force of nature" who appears to have boundless energy when it comes to protecting the rights of child victims.

"He is incredibly driven and hardworking," Melillo said. "His motives are justice for children, and that's it in a nutshell."

Suppressing Sandy Hook

As a defense lawyer and later a fellow prosecutor, Cornelius Kelly has tried cases both against and with Sedensky.

"Steve is one of the most conscientious, hardworking and ethical prosecutors in the state," Kelly said. "He has the highest regard for victims and represents their right to justice."

Edward Gavin, past president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said last week that while Sedensky has a reputation for high ethical standards, in a courtroom, he is as tough as they come.

"Steve is a detail guy and I think he wants everything to be accurate," Gavin said. "He's a very, very, very good trial lawyer who's tenacious, very confident and very prepared, very experienced and very comfortable," Gavin said. "He's not afraid to try a case at any time. He's a hands-on state's attorney."

Gavin, speculating on the long gestation of the Sandy Hook report, said it might be the result of Sedensky's passion for detail and accuracy.

But Hartford attorney Daniel J. Klau, a First Amendment specialist, wonders how -- without a crime to prosecute -- Sedensky has been able to control the investigative highlights, which will be released Monday afternoon as a 40-page summary for the public.

"I have no personal relationship with him and no professional relationship," Klau said last week.

Klau's web blog, "Appealingly Brief!" recently chastised Sedensky for taking so long. He said the Criminal Justice Commission, which appoints and disciplines state's attorneys, should take an interest in Sedensky's suppression of the 911 recordings, which are routinely released by local police to the news media after most major crimes.

"Should State's Attorney Sedensky be removed from office because of the long delay in preparing and releasing his report on Sandy Hook?" Klau's blog asked. "No. Should he be called before the Criminal Justice Commission, which appointed him to his position, to account for the delay and for his persistence in making highly questionable legal arguments to justify his refusal to release 911 calls? Yes. The Criminal Justice Commission should demand an explanation of his conduct, and the public is entitled to hear that explanation."

In an interview last week, Klau said the more than 11-month process since the shooting is unacceptable. In fact, Sedensky has commandeered the entire investigatory protocol, he said

"There has been a complete inversion of the normal reporting process," Klau said. "Usually, State Police do their report, finish it and make recommendations, and draft arrest warrants they present to state's attorneys. Then the state's attorneys accept or reject the recommendations."

Klau charged that Sedensky has "really inserted himself" into the Newtown investigation. He also said the Monday report is just an executive summary.

"The major report is still to come, and at this point, we have no idea when it will be released. Why, in this case, has the process been inverted?" Klau said. "I can't say it's unprecedented. But it's extraordinarily unusual and I have no reason to believe it's an evolutionary step."

He wonders why Sedensky was able to keep the report to himself.

"It's almost as if he's behaving like a private attorney for the Sandy Hook families," Klau said. "The state's attorney is not private counsel for the victims and families. That is troubling."